Speech #510129581

In Fran ce. with wages at $5. the capital Invested is about $1.010 per capita. and In England. with wages at $7.74 per week. it is $1.300 per capita. England lives underabsolute free trade. pays tile highest wages of any country in the world outside of the United States. and by reason of her concentration of capital and her machinery. In the first of which she is fully equaled and in the last greatly surpassed by the United States. instead of asking protection against the pauper labor of her neighbors. undersells them iii their own markets. Ill 1880 the London Times admitted that the manufactured products of the United States exceeded those of the United Kingdom more than one thousand millions of dollars worth annually. and this excess must since that time have doubled or trebled. yet the Republican party continues. on the false and fraudulent plea of a necessity for the protection of American manufactures against European competition. to raise our tariff duties higher and make the prices of all manufactured products dearer to the American people who are compelled to buy them. The "infant industry argument. through which for one hundred years Government bounties to manufacturers were sustained. having become palpably absurd in view of the undenied fact that this is the greatest manufacturing country in the world. the advocates of a high tariff next fell h ack upon the position that high protective duties were needed to reimburse the manulhcturers for the difference between the alleged high wages paid in this country and thelow wages paid in Europe. and when met upon that ground with indisputable evidence that average duties ot 15 per cent. would more than make good this difference. and that a tariff of 20 per cent. average duties would more than pay back all the money paid out as wages by our manuflcturers. boldly throw off the mask. and claim the right to make a prohibitory tariff to exclude the competition of foreign goods and subject the whole population of the country to the unrestrained power of manutacturers and their combinations and trusts. which destroy internal competition. to make such exorbitant and extortionate demands for manufactured products as they see fit to dictate.